Announcing: The Craft Bartender Summit

This project has been in the works for several months – and an idea that we’ve had for years. I couldn’t be more excited to formally announce the Craft Bartender Summit: an online conference for craft bartenders.

We’re putting together a full day of craft bartending seminars from industry experts that you can watch from anywhere in the world.

The Inspiration

Over the last few years, Chris and I have been fortunate enough to attend some great industry events – (Tales being my favorite.) But when we returned and posted about it on the blog, we’d often hear from bartenders who desperately wanted to go – but couldn’t swing the budget and couldn’t get their shifts covered. (And definitely not far enough in advance to buy flights!)

And I should add – we were in the same situation in 2013. Chris managed to get time off, but it was unpaid and we took a big financial hit that month to travel and go without a big chunk of income.

Surely there was a way to take the great educational seminars you frequently see at these events and share them on the web with our online audience. And so – the Summit was born!

How it Works:

This Summit is completely online and completely free. Here’s how it’ll work:

On April 17th, we’ll screen six pre-recorded seminars on CraftBartenderSummit.com, alongside a live chat with the seminar speakers. If you’re registered, you’ll get completely free access to watch the seminars (and free replays if you missed the “live” screening.) After the event, I’ll also send out useful follow up materials, like seminar slides or supplemental information.

Seminar Topics:

I’ll be honest – we’re still finalizing our last couple of speakers so I can’t let the cat out of the bag just yet. But here are the subject areas we’re asking all speakers to choose from:

Hospitality

Product Knowledge

Bar Career

Business of the Bar

Craft Techniques

Wait, it’s free?

This is something we debated for a long time: “How much should we charge?” As far as I know, there aren’t any other events quite like this – so we couldn’t really do “what everyone else is doing.” At the end of the day it came down to this:

Chris and I founded A Bar Above to help make a craft bartending education accessible for every bartender, worldwide. If the Summit is going to align with that mission, then there’s only one price that’s going to work:

Free.

How are we doing that? We’re partnering with sponsors to help make this happen: I’ve found some amazing brands who truly believe in the value of a completely free craft bartending education. Sponsors will be announced very soon and spots are going quickly – so if you know a brand who’d like to partner with us, let me know!